Businesses are concerned that in their eagerness to implement AI, they are making themselves more vulnerable to cyber threats. In a recent survey of more than 350 IT leaders, more than half of executives surveyed said the complexity of AI applications is weakening their organization's cybersecurity posture. Another study found that more than two-fifths of executives believe their security teams lack the skills needed to protect AI applications and workloads.
The demand for solutions to secure AI apps has spawned a whole gamut of startups. For example, HiddenLayer and Protect AI focus on defending AI systems from adversarial attacks, while Cranium provides visibility into AI systems at the application level.
Today, Noma Security, a new venture emerging from stealth, does all this and more, claims co-founder and CEO Niv Brown. The startup develops tools to identify vulnerable data pipelines and code in data science environments, as well as threats such as prompt injection attacks.
Braun started Noma with Alon Tron after leaving customer experience automation company Verint. There, he discovered a “critical blind spot” for security teams in the data and AI lifecycle.
“Existing tools are designed for a traditional software lifecycle,” Brown says. “However, data and AI lifecycles are inherently different; they involve separate R&D processes, rely on different technologies, and face unique technical vulnerabilities within AI models. Masu.”
Noma is designed to help you find and fix misconfigurations in components used to develop and run AI applications. For example, the platform scans for “sensitive” data in model training datasets, such as text containing personally identifiable information.
Brown argues that businesses will be better equipped to deal with threats if they can consolidate the security capabilities of AI apps into a single dashboard that can be deployed in cloud-based or self-hosted environments.
“Many single-function security solutions are flooding the market trying to capitalize on the AI hype,” he said. “By enabling enterprises to understand the footprint of their AI applications and provide governance controls, Noma not only helps organizations minimize and mitigate risk, but also accelerates the use of AI. , and give businesses the confidence they need to expand into higher-value parts of their business.”
Founded in 2023, Noma already has paying customers, including Fortune 500 customers in B2B software, financial services and retail, Brown said. The startup recently closed a $25 million Series A funding round, which Brown said was pre-empted by investors. Norma had plenty of cash.
“we, [$25 million]”Even though we still have a lot of money in the bank, to accelerate our development, especially our go-to-market team and efforts,” he said, adding that Norma plans to double the size of its 20-person team next year. added.
Ballistic Ventures led Noma's Series A, bringing the company's total funding to $32 million. Noma has raised $7 million in a previously undisclosed seed round led by Glilot Capital Partners with participation from Cyber Club London.